Creatures of the Night (Boxed Set Edition). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

him for his misfortunes, and she finished with forgetting his face, legs, and back in her admiration of what she supposed to be his mind.

      She had vowed before marriage faithfully to perform all the duties of a wife, however distasteful to her they might be; but after the nuptials, which were not long deferred, she was not surprised to find that she loved her husband. Not only did she omit to think of his features and figure; I verily believe that she loved him the more for his repulsiveness. Ugly, very ugly men prevail over women for two reasons. Firstly, we begin with repugnance, which in the course of nature turns to affection; and we all like the most that which, when unaccustomed to it, we most disliked. Hence the poet says, with as much truth as is in the male:

      Never despair, O man! when woman’s spite

       Detests thy name and sickens at thy sight:

       Sometime her heart shall learn to love thee more

       For the wild hatred which it felt before, &c.

      Secondly, the very ugly man appears, deceitfully enough, to think little of his appearance, and he will give himself the trouble to pursue a heart because he knows that the heart will not follow after him. Moreover, we women (said the jay) are by nature pitiful, and this our enemies term a “strange perversity.” A widow is generally disconsolate if she loses a little, wizen-faced, shrunken shanked, ugly, spiteful, distempered thing that scolded her and quarrelled with her, and beat her and made her hours bitter; whereas she will follow her husband to Ganges with exemplary fortitude if he was brave, handsome, generous——

      “Either hold your tongue or go on with your story,” cried the warrior king, in whose mind these remarks awakened disagreeable family reflections.

      “Hi! hi! hi!” laughed the demon; “I will obey your majesty, and make Madan-manjari, the misanthropical jay, proceed.”

      Yes, she loved the hunchback; and how wonderful is our love! quoth the jay. A light from heaven which rains happiness on this dull, dark earth! A spell falling upon the spirit, which reminds us of a higher existence! A memory of bliss! A present delight! An earnest of future felicity! It makes hideousness beautiful and stupidity clever, old age young and wickedness good, moroseness amiable, and low-mindedness magnanimous, perversity pretty and vulgarity piquant. Truly it is sovereign alchemy and excellent flux for blending contradictions is our love, exclaimed the jay.

      And so saying, she cast a triumphant look at the parrot, who only remarked that he could have desired a little more originality in her remarks.

      For some months (resumed Madan-manjari), the bride and the bridegroom lived happily together in Hemgupt’s house. But it is said:

      Never yet did the tiger become a lamb;

      and the hunchback felt that the edge of his passions again wanted blunting. He reflected, “Wisdom is exemption from attachment, and affection for children, wife, and home.” Then he thus addressed my poor young mistress:

      “I have been now in thy country some years, and I have heard no tidings of my own family, hence my mind is sad, I have told thee everything about myself; thou must now ask thy mother leave for me to go to my own city, and, if thou wishest, thou mayest go with me.”

      Ratnawati lost no time in saying to her mother, “My husband wishes to visit his own country; will you so arrange that he may not be pained about this matter?”

      The mother went to her husband, and said, “Your son-in-law desires leave to go to his own country.”

      Hemgupt replied, “Very well; we will grant him leave. One has no power over another man’s son. We will do what he wishes.”

      The parents then called their daughter, and asked her to tell them her real desire-whether she would go to her father-in-law’s house, or would remain in her mother’s home. She was abashed at this question, and could not answer; but she went back to her husband, and said, “As my father and mother have declared that you should do as you like, do not leave me behind.”

      Presently the merchant summoned his son-in-law, and having bestowed great wealth upon him, allowed him to depart. He also bade his daughter farewell, after giving her a palanquin and a female slave. And the parents took leave of them with wailing and bitter tears; their hearts were like to break. And so was mine.

      For some days the hunchback travelled quietly along with his wife, in deep thought. He could not take her to his city, where she would find out his evil life, and the fraud which he had passed upon her father. Besides which, although he wanted her money, he by no means wanted her company for life. After turning on many projects in his evil-begotten mind, he hit upon the following:

      He dismissed the palanquin-bearers when halting at a little shed in the thick jungle through which they were travelling, and said to his wife, “This is a place of danger; give me thy jewels, and I will hide them in my waist-shawl. When thou reachest the city thou canst wear them again.” She then gave up to him all her ornaments, which were of great value. Thereupon he inveigled the slave girl into the depths of the forest, where he murdered her, and left her body to be devoured by wild beasts. Lastly, returning to my poor mistress, he induced her to leave the hut with him, and pushed her by force into a dry well, after which exploit he set out alone with his ill-gotten wealth, walking towards his own city.

      In the meantime, a wayfaring man, who was passing through that jungle, hearing the sound of weeping, stood still, and began to say to himself, “How came to my ears the voice of a mortal’s grief in this wild wood?” then followed the direction of the noise, which led him a pit, and peeping over the side, he saw a woman crying at the bottom. The traveller at once loosened his gird cloth, knotted it to his turband, and letting down the line pulled out the poor bride. He asked her who she was and how she came to fall into that well. She replied, “I am the daughter of Hemgupt, the wealthiest merchant in the city of Chandrapur; and I was journeying with my husband to his own country, when robbers set upon us and surrounded us. They slew my slave girl, the threw me into a well, and having bound my husband they took him away, together with my jewels. I have no tidings of him, nor he of me.” And so saying, she burst into tears and lamentations.

      The wayfaring man believed her tale, and conducted her to her home, where she gave the same account of the accident which had befallen her, ending with, “beyond this, I know not if they have killed my husband, or have let him go.” The father thus soothed her grief “Daughter! have no anxiety; thy husband is alive, and by the will of the Deity he will come to thee in a few days. Thieves take men’s money, not their lives.” Then the parents presented her with ornaments more precious than those which she had lost; and summoning their relations and friends, they comforted her to the best of their power.

      And so did I. The wicked hunchback had, meanwhile, returned to his own city, where he was excellently well received, because he brought much wealth with him. His old associates flocked around him rejoicing; and he fell into the same courses which had beggared him before. Gambling and debauchery soon blunted his passions, and emptied his purse. Again his boon companions, finding him without a broken cowrie, drove him from their doors, he stole and was flogged for theft; and lastly, half famished, he fled the city. Then he said to himself, “I must go to my father-in-law, and make the excuse that a grandson has been born to him, and that I have come to offer him congratulations on the event.”

      Imagine, however, his fears and astonishment, when, as he entered the house, his wife stood before him. At first he thought it was a ghost, and turned to run away, but she went out to him and said, “Husband, be not troubled! I have told my father that thieves came upon us, and killed the slave girl and robbed me and threw me into a well, and bound thee and carried thee off. Tell the same story, and put away all anxious feelings. Come up and change thy tattered garments-alas! some misfortune hath befallen thee. But console thyself; all is now well, since thou art returned to me, and fear not, for the house is thine, and I am thy slave.”

      The wretch, with all his hardness of heart, could scarcely refrain from tears. He followed his wife to her room, where she washed his feet, caused him to bathe, dressed him in new clothes, and placed food before him. When her parents returned, she presented him to their embrace, saying in a glad way, “Rejoice with me, O